Course CSCI 4230-02 : Web Application Development Assignment 1
Assignment 1.1
Before comparing Web accessibility and Web usability, we need to know what they are. “Web accessibility means that the people with disabilities such as visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web site like the way usual people can do. Web accessibility also benefits others, including older people with changing abilities due to aging”(http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php). And Web usability means that the way to make a Web site easier and more convenient to use. In generation, Web accessibility and Web usability affect each other, cannot be separated when designing and implementing a web site. They help the people with every physical and knowledge conditions can use the web easily and conveniently. They have some similarities: they can be affected by some factors such as the knowledge of the Web designer, the finance of organization, the content and service of the Web, the Web techniques used to develop the Web page. However, each of them focus specially on a specific aspect, such as Web accessibility focus on the way people with disabilities to access and interact with the Web page and Web usability concentrate on the way to organize the content of Web site ( user interface) and the services that the Web page offers to users. To achieve the Web accessibility and Web usability the Web designers and developers, they have to use some guidelines and techniques to design and evaluate the Web site such as for “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines, User Agent Accessibility Guidelines, and so on1. For Web usability, the guidelines are Provide Useful Content, Establish User Requirement, Understand and Meet User’s Expectation, and so forth2.
In summary, Web accessibility and Web usability are very important things that make a Web site easy to use for every people.
References:
1. http://www.w3.org/WAI/guid-tech
2. http://www.usability.gov/pdfs/chapter1.pdf
Assignment 1.2
a) How wellthe OSP 2.0 Demo is designed with respect to Web usability? Use at least 3 screen shots to justify your answer.
In my opinion, OSP 2.0 Demo is designed carefully and scientifically because of the following things:
· OSP supports a detailed guide tour to help new users know what OSP is, what services OSP offer, also know how to use it. It makes the new users happy and will familiar with this Web page system easily and rapidly.
Figure 1: OSP Guided Tour
· OSP also offers some available accounts for the new user to try using it immediately. I think this is an interesting thing I have never seen before because some Web pages require new users a lot of information to register a membership so sometimes the new users feel bad and give up to try using these Web pages. So this makes new users feel convenient.
· OSP has a well-organized represent. It has Tabs across the top of the screen to determine which CIG to which the user belongs. And the menu at the left represents the functions OSP offers corresponding to a chosen CIG. Especially, the Tabs has a combo box to keep some hidden CIGs for the future use, I think this makes the Web much tidier, clearer than we show all of the Tabs.
Figure 2: Illustrate well-organized of OSP
· OSP provide some automatic update, for example: “CIGs may be automatically created and populated based on integration with other campus systems”, “Individuals may be automatically added to particular CIGs based on integration with other campus systems”, (http://www.osportfolio.org/tour/page09.html), the user’s profile can be extract from content stored in his or her repository.
Figure 3: Illustrate the automatic update function of OSP
· Every user has a MyWorkspace, and from this users can customize their Web page by themselves. I think it is a good idea that the Web designers should implement to satisfy the plentiful requirements of the Web users.
· OSP offers a repository for every user to store various type of file such as file text, file audio, file video. So the users can access, query to retrieve the expected information easily and conveniently.
· OSP also offer some useful types of display the query result. It’s convenient for the user to see the result clearly not only the dry number.
Figure 4: Illustrate the useful result display OSP offers
· OSP is designed for not only various type of user but also plentiful purpose of using. For example: “Individual learners, teachers, and professionals create electronic portfolios to represent themselves using OSP web-based software”. And user can use OSP Web to do the following things :
ü “Collect a diverse, multi-media set of items that represent learning and experience over a lifetime”
ü “Reflect on curricular, co-curricular, and non-curricular experiences and accomplishments to integrate and enhance learning”
ü “Select subsets to represent different aspects of their identities and experiences”
ü “connect with multiple audiences across multiple contexts for communication, sharing, and feedback” 1
Reference:
1. Source at http://www.osportfolio.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=29
b) How the portfolio system can help you to manage your term project if we use it in Spring 2007?
Through studying Home of Open Source Portfolio system, I know how to design and implement a Web usable and meet user’s plentiful requirement. So I think it is useful to use this system to manage my term project. It certainly brings a lot of benefit to me.
First, all the member of my team can use it to interact with each other conveniently and quickly. We then can upload our work-load to our account make sure they can’t be lost by any reasons such as broken computer, forgot where our work was save, and so on. Furthermore, OSP system support some useful types of represent retrieve result, so we can keep track the project develop progress easily and can make sure our project will be done on time.
Student : Thanh Tran 4